Although I don’t eat very much meat, I’ve learned to adapt since my adorable Brazilian husband loves meat. I mean, loves meat. One of the things that he learned how to say in English in the very beginning was how to order his meat in English.

When you go to a restaurant and order steak (or meat), there are four options to how you would like the meat cooked. This determines how long the meat is cooked, the color inside the steak.

Knowing these four words/phrases will help you know how to order your steak when you go to a steakhouse.

Raw

This first one isn’t a normal word to use to order meat but I want to make sure that you understand this word and how it compares to the other words.

Raw: uncooked; not cooked at all

Raw is how you would buy the meat from a butcher or from the grocery store. I don’t know of any steakhouse that would let you order your steak raw, since you can get very sick from eating your meat raw.

Rare

Rare means that the outside of the meat will be cooked but inside will be red. This means that the steak is cooked for less time since it didn’t cook completely inside.

Rare: red inside

Medium rare

Medium rare means that you don’t want your steak completely red inside but would prefer a small layer of red, surrounded by pink.

Medium rare: cooked on the outside, then pink, then red for a small area inside

Medium well

Medium well means that you would like for there to be a small amount of pink inside. It is close to being completely cooked (well) but it’s still pink.

Medium well: a little bit of pink

Well done

Well done means that the steak is completely cooked. There are no parts of pink.